The Cisco Nexus® 7000 F-Series 32-Port 1 and 10 Gigabit Ethernet Module offers outstanding flexibility and performance, with extensive virtualization and multipath capabilities. The module enables the deployment of high-density, low-latency, scalable data center architecture.

The Cisco Nexus 7000 F-Series 32-Port 1 and 10 Gigabit Ethernet Module is the first of the Cisco Nexus 7000 F-Series Ethernet modules, extending the capabilities of the Cisco Nexus 7000 Series in the data center. Powered by the F1 forwarding engine, the module delivers 480 million packets per second (Mpps) of distributed Layer 2 forwarding and up to 320 Gbps of data throughput through a custom dedicated forwarding application- specific integrated circuit (ASIC), enabling the creation of extensible data centers. A Cisco Nexus 7000 18-Slot Switch fully populated with Cisco Nexus F-Series 32-Port 1 and 10 Gigabit Ethernet Modules has the capability to deliver up to 10.2 terabits per second (Tbps) of switching performance, with a typical power consumption of less than 10 watts (W) per port.

Powerful access control list (ACL) processing supports 32,000 per module, ingress and egress, with the ACL entries addressing Layer 2, 3, and 4 fields. The F1 forwarding engine also supports applications requiring port mirroring, with integrated hardware support for 16 simultaneous unidirectional Cisco Switched Port Analyzer (SPAN) sessions per module. Additionally, the F-Series module delivers integrated Fibre Channel over Ethernet (FCoE), greatly simplifying the network infrastructure and reducing costs by enabling the deployment of unified data center fabrics to consolidate data center traffic onto a single, general-purpose, high-performance, highly available network.

With the Cisco Nexus 7000 F-Series module, FCoE can be deployed in director-class modular platforms for the access and core of converged networks. In addition to FCoE host and target support, the module provides VE-port support, allowing creation of FCoE Inter-Switch Links (ISLs) and enabling scalable, multihop FCoE topologies. The FCoE traffic in a Cisco Nexus 7000 Series Switch can be segmented using a dedicated storage virtual device context (VDC), providing isolation within the shared physical infrastructure. Cisco Nexus 7000 Series FCoE converged networks can be transparently bridged to Cisco® MDS 9500 Series Fibre Channel SANs with the Cisco MDS 10-Gbps 8-Port FCoE Module. This capability preserves existing and continued investments in Fibre Channel SANs and offers a single unified OS (Cisco NX-OS Software) and management platform (Cisco Data Center Network Manager [DCNM]) for both the LAN and SAN.

The Cisco Nexus 7000 F-Series modules, when combined with the powerful Cisco NX-OS Software, deliver Cisco FabricPath multipath Ethernet technologies based on IETF Transparent Interconnection of Lots of Links (TRILL). Cisco FabricPath comprises a set of multipath Ethernet technologies and combines the reliability and scalability benefits of Layer 3 routing with the flexibility of Layer 2 Ethernet networks. With Cisco FabricPath, organizations can now build massively scalable, flexible networks that efficiently use available bandwidth between nodes, offering improved network resiliency.

Cisco FabricPath offers a topology-based Layer 2 routing mechanism that provides an equal-cost multipath (ECMP) forwarding model. Cisco FabricPath implements an enhancement that resolves the MAC address table scalability challenge characteristic of switched Layer 2 networks. Enhanced virtual PortChannel (vPC+) is another technology offered by Cisco FabricPath. Similar to vPC, vPC+ allows the redundant interconnection of the existing Ethernet infrastructure to a Cisco FabricPath fabric without relying on Spanning Tree Protocol.

The benefits of Cisco FabricPath include:
- Operational simplicity: Cisco FabricPath embeds an autodiscovery mechanism that does not require any additional platform configuration. By offering Layer 2 connectivity, this “VLAN anywhere” characteristic simplifies provisioning and offers workload flexibility across the network.
- High resiliency and performance: Because Cisco FabricPath is a Layer 2 routed protocol, it offers stability, scalability, and optimized resiliency along with network failure containment.
- Massively scalable fabric: By building a forwarding model on 16-way ECMP, Cisco FabricPath helps prevent bandwidth bottlenecks and allows capacity to be added dynamically, without network disruption.

The Cisco Nexus 7000 F-1 Series 32-Port 1 and 10 Gigabit Ethernet Module delivers up to 512 ports per chassis capable of flexibly supporting both Gigabit and 10 Gigabit Ethernet on a per-port basis. Both Small Form-Factor Pluggable (SFP) and Enhanced SFP (SFP+) optics are available for long- and short-haul applications, including Twinax support, for rack-to-rack data center applications, enabling migration and support for numerous deployment scenarios requiring different media types. Table 1 summarizes the features and benefits of the Cisco Nexus 7000 F1-Series 32-Port 1 and 10 Gigabit Ethernet Module.